Covering letters are a pain, aren’t they? I can remember stressing for hours, days even, over them. I’d get friends and family to look over them for me, suggesting improvements and correcting my basic spelling errors. Yet, for ages, I didn’t get any replies. It felt like employers weren’t even looking at my cover letters. What I needed was some good advice about how to write a cover letter that would make employers reply. And that’s exactly what I’ve found online for you. The following are some articles about how to write a cover letter that employers will actually read:

Prospects and Reed both have a guide to writing a cover letter that breaks it down paragraph by paragraph. They’re a really useful as a starting point if you’re completely at a loss as to what to write and there’s some examples of good cover letters too.

Cosmo have also offered their advice on how to write a good cover letter – they’ve even included some advice from their features team about what they look for in cover letters.

The Guardian Careers site has created three examples of standard cover letters. One for when you’re applying for an advertised job. One for when you’re sending in a speculative application. And one that’s a bit more creative. Obviously, it’s not a very good idea to just send out a standard letter for every job application, but these could offer some much needed inspiration.

Just in case you’re still a bit confused about cover letters. Those helpful folks over at Ideas Tap have compiled five common mistakes made in cover letters. Check it out.